


Chris Pike is Dead, Long Live Chris Pike

by wrennette



Series: Trashpile: A Compendium of Unfinished Fics [1]
Category: Doom (2005), Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Crossover, Reaper!Bones, archiving old words, non consensual medical procedures, off screen character death, weird science
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-26
Updated: 2016-02-26
Packaged: 2018-05-23 07:23:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6109382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wrennette/pseuds/wrennette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Captain Pike died on the table.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chris Pike is Dead, Long Live Chris Pike

Chris blinked, silently taking stock. A ‘Fleet sickbay. No. The _Enterprise_ ’s secondary sickbay. He sat, still blinking, and utterly confused. The door hissed open, then closed again behind the broad shouldered form of the Acting CMO, and shards of memory rushed up. Staggering from the transporter pad and being half carried to sickbay. The numbness sweeping up from his legs. McCoy’s frantic face as Chris struggled for air. An explanation he couldn’t quite fathom, and then the soft hiss and cool pressure of a hypo against his neck.

“Captain, I’m afraid you died on the table,” McCoy said, stepping forward. Chris felt his face settle into an expression of confusion. McCoy sighed and gave a wry little smile. “I’m Staff Sergeant John Grimm, Rapid Response Tactical Squad, Special Operations, United States Marine Corps. You’ve been injected with the last extant dose of serum C24, formerly the property of United Aerospace Corporation, developed at Olduvai Research Station, Mars.” Chris swallowed thickly. 

“I understand,” Chris said, fisting his hands and then looking down at them. His human hands. McCoy - Grimm - had injected him to save his life, injected him evidently with the knowledge that Chris wouldn’t mutate. “I - you said last extant dose?”

“My sister took three doses from the facility before it was closed. I received the first, she the second. We stored the final dose in a secure location for over a hundred years. But even C24 can’t save you when a warp core goes nuclear. My sister died during the development of warp capability. I’ve carried that dose with me ever since,” Grimm said evenly.

“And you gave it to me?” Chris asked, and Grimm shrugged. “How could you know...” Chris started, then let the question trail off. He could tell, something indefinable, scent and just plain feeling, that Grimm was the same as him, superhuman, non-mutating. He shook his head, then boosted himself up on his feet. 

“Mirror’s over here,” Grimm said, and Chris went. He blinked at his reflection a moment. The fine lines and wrinkles that had begun settling on his face were smoothed out already. The grey hadn’t faded from his hair, but he doubted it would, or at least not immediately.

“Why me?” Chris had to ask, turning back to Grimm.

“I’m not sure you understand how rare it is to find someone the serum wouldn’t change,” Grimm said honestly, then sighed and gestured back at the bed. “The moment I met you, at the recruiting seminar, I knew you were like me and Sam. There’s a good chance you’re descended from one of us. I’m sure you know that my enlistment was less as a cadet and more as an officer candidate given the history I’d built as Leonard McCoy,” Grimm explained. 

“I looked you up, wondered who this man was, who had that rare whatever it is that makes the serum work as intended,” Grimm continued. “Sam always claimed it was because there was something inherently good in me that I didn’t change. I don’t know. I couldn’t exactly get samples off the mutants for comparison, and I wasn’t going to create a mutant to find out. But I wanted to know as much about you as I could. You’d be surprised how much a Marine can find out when he’s motivated. And between what I learned about you from the ‘net and what I could tell from the times we interacted socially, you were someone I came to respect.” Chris found himself blushing a little at that.

“And that was that?” Chris asked, and Grimm shrugged. 

“I’ll admit it wasn’t a thoroughly thought out decision,” Grimm admitted. “You were asystole. Nothing I could do was helping. That slug had shredded your brainstem, and you were losing basal functions. I cleared the room, told the nurses I was trying something desperate and probably illegal, and then gave you the serum. I unhooked everything, then cut the slug out of your head. You were down four hours while the serum worked.”

“And you, when your sister gave it to you?” Chris asked.

“Half an hour to an hour. But I was bleeding out from a gut wound. Less complicated repairs,” Grimm said dryly.

“So now what?” Chris asked. “Standard procedure is space burial, but I doubt I could survive that.”

“Probably not,” Grimm agreed. “Now you get smuggled into my cabin, and later, smuggled off ship. I’ll teach you what you need to know, and then you disappear. Chris Pike is dead, long live Chris Pike.” Chris snorted softly, but he understood.

**Author's Note:**

> reformatted from a chapter in a multifandom fic to standalone. If you commented on the previous fic, thank you, I appreciate it even though the comments have been deleted.


End file.
